Día del Niño... Day of the Child

Every September 9th, Costa Rica celebrates "Day of the Child"... think Mother's day but to celebrate kids. Mason is attending a Montessori school across the street from our house for a few hours every morning.... and they threw a big party to celebrate! We were so glad they invited all of the kids to come! It was wonderful.... and a beautiful idea to remind us that children are really to be celebrated. Children are a gift from the Lord! 

Our big kid!

Captain America!

Frozen....

Mason's turn to hit the piñata!

"Take my yoke upon you" - a devotional thought by Maddie

 Saturday we made a trip to a town called Sarchi. It is most famous for building beautifully decorated ox carts which are used mostly for transporting coffee. It is said that their design was inspired by the carts the Spanish for transporting canons. In the center of the town there is a huge ox cart that actually was built specifically to be put in the Guinness  Book of World Records. Of course to be useful, ox carts must come with a yoke for the animals to wear so that they can pull the cart. As we were walking past, my dad pointed out the huge yoke (that came with the BIGGEST ox cart in the world, so you can imagine the size of this yoke!) 

Immediately, I thought of the verse in Matthew 11:29-30 that says "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest in your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Often we carry the massive yoke of sin and evil things of this crooked and depraved generation, and they become so heavy we can barely move. Sometimes the yoke may be the burdens and concerns of this world. We have the option to let God take these crushing yokes off of our weary shoulders. Not only does He want to do that, but He also says He will replace our heavy "yoke" with His easy and light one! What a marvelous blessing- that only our marvelous God can give to us!

The worlds largest yoke

So here is my encouragement to you, brothers and sisters; next time you are falling to the ground because of your heavy yoke, right then and there - STOP and surrender - give everything up to Jesus- and let Him replace your yoke with His! Blessings come out of surrender. Surrender means truly, wholeheartedly obeying, and giving up yourself, your ways, and your life.  Lay your yoke down at the feet of Jesus and have faith and trust that God is good!

In front of the worlds largest ox cart. 

We enjoyed watching the hand-painting of the ox cart wheels.

# 22 Guayabo de Turrialba

# 22 On our Scavenger Hunt....The Guayabo archeological site is locoated in the town of Turrialba . It's the site of an indigenous  settlement that was occupied between 1000 BC and 1400 AD after which it was mysteriously abandoned. There are huge round stone bases left that had conical structures (that were communal homes) on them. We had an awesome tour guide that taught us so much! (school field trip again!) Original aqueducts still bring water from high in the mountains to the settlement and beautiful stone carvings are still studied by archeologists to determine their significance. 

This picture was taken on our way to Guayabo. We were high
above the clouds! It was beautiful! 

                               

An up high view of the round stone bases that the communal
houses were built on. The largest circle was for the
most important person in the community. About 10,000
people lived here. 

Our tour guide taught us so much! 

Checking out the aqueduct...

Ethan says: I loved learning that the people who lived here 3000 years ago were good engineers and that the size and height of their house showed how important they were. I really liked the petroglyph (I learned that is a prehistoric rock carving)  stone that had a jaguar carved on one side and an alligator on the other. (In the picture below) We learned that it symbolized unity (land animals and water animals living together.)

This is a picture of what a smaller house would have looked like.  The
way they know this is that there are some indigenous tribes still today
who use similar structures and who have explained a lot of what has been
found at Guayabo.

Mom says: I love learning about all of the different flora. This plant pictured below is solid green on the top but has what looks like drops of red blood under the leaves. The locals call it the "Blood of Jesus Christ" plant. They say it grew near His cross and His blood dropped unto the leaves and all leaves have grown with this ever since. We know that God created this amazing leaf to attract pollinators with the red color. 

One of Amelia's favorite things at Guayabo was this glass winged butterfly. Can you see that the wings are transparent? It was beautiful! And she loved the flowers and BIG leaves!

A beautiful dragonfly

Together in Guayabo

Joshua says: It was so neat seeing the bases of houses that were over 2000 years old and I loved learning about their culture. 

#11 Parrots, #12 Toucan at Carara National Park... plus other wonderful discoveries!

Last Friday Mom, Maddie, Joshua and Ethan headed out for a field trip to Carara National Park. It is only an hour from our home and it was an awesome day exploring. We are studying ecology this year in school and have been focusing on different forests... the different layers of the forest, and the plant and animal life that live there. Our day in Carara National Park was spent exploring what we have been learning! We also saw two more animals that are listed on our scavenger hunt!

#12 on the Scavenger hunt, the Toucan! This picture is taken
through the telescope we used to get a close look at the bird.
Toucans live on the emergent layer of the forest, the very highest of all. 

#11 Parrots. This type of parrot is everywhere is Costa Rica. 
The other day Joshua and Mom went for a walk and 
we saw a ton of these green parrots flying around. 
We also have some that make their home on a roof of a neighbors home. 
In addition to these we saw beautiful macaws. 
They were way to high up to get a good picture... but they were amazing and beautiful. 

This Boa was directly above us in the understory laver of the forest. 
We couldn't see his head but we could track at 
least 10 feet of his body.... Josh says: It was awesome!

A millipede

This spider is called the golden spider. He was beautiful! 
We were all a little freaked out when our tour guide 
went and picked him up... 
but it was awesome to get a close look at this amazing arachnid.

We learned a lot about trees... One of the most amazing is 
the strangling fig, pictured here behind us. 

Aerial roots

This pretty flower is part of the ginger family.

The next three pictures are of different mushrooms that we have seen... Finding mushrooms and learning about their niche in the ecosystem has been one of our favorite things!

Beautiful white mushrooms

These mushrooms were tiny, less than an inch long, but hundreds were on this tree.

This bright orange mushroom was incredible.
We learned that eating one is fatal to humans, but they are beautiful!

School happens everywhere here. When we are walking through this forest it was especially amazing to see large signs (in English and Spanish) reinforcing everything we have been learning in books. We are also becoming avid bird watchers. The variety of birds in Costa Rica is amazing and we love finding the bird in books and learning it's name.

A sign at Carara discussing the different layers of the forest.

                                      

A variety of this bird can be found pictured above.... It didn't have a striped tail though. 

Consider the "leaf cutting" ant... Devotional thought from Ethan

One of my favorite insects here is Costa Rica is the leaf cutter ant. These ants are incredible! They are so hard working! The leaf cutter queen can lay up to 30,000 eggs a day. One colony can have over 8 million ants in it. The entire colony consists of three types of ants, 1 queen and then workers (the females) and soldiers. They all work together. One next can be larger than a car! 

What I love about these ants is that they are so hard working. Things that seem impossible.... they still try. One ant can carry 50 times its body weight! There are so many things we can learn from the leaf cutter ants. One thing they have taught me is that I should work hard at all the things I have to do right now, like studying and learning, spending time in God's word. The Bible has a lot to say about not being lazy. These ants are not lazy! Mom and I sat and watched a colony of these ants for a long time and every ant was working so hard. We couldn't believe how much they were carrying and how quickly they were working. 

The Bible says:

Proverbs 6:6: Consider the ant, Oh sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise. 

1 Corinthians 10:31 says:  So whether you ear or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 

Colossians 3:23: Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, and not for man.

These ants have inspired me to work harder, with all my heart, and to do it all for the glory of God. 

These ant hills are near our home and we loved watching the ants work in this park, cutting leaves.
Once they cut their leaves, they take them into their nest and
farm them into an edible fungus that feeds the colony. 

A different nest we found.

The little leaves you see on the path are all being carried by leaf cutters ants...

Our tour guide is holding a leaf cutter ant and the ant is holding up this huge leaf!

More leaf cutters hard at work! 

Our weekend adventures and #24 A colorful mural

This past weekend we headed out to downtown San Jose to shop at the market... when we came upon this beautiful mural... (actually a mosaic). We loved it and decided we would use it as #24 on our scavenger hunt... a colorful mural! We also couldn't resist more coconuts... quickly becoming a favorite of everyones... and they are very inexpensive, just 50 cents each. 

We then headed to La Sabana,  San Jose's main recreational park. It was drizzling while we were there but that didn't stop everyone from having fun! An awesome soccer match was played between Josh and Ethan against Dad and Maddie. Ethan says: The BOYS won! 

Mason and Amelia enjoyed the playground.

On Sunday we traveled about an hour our of the city, up into the mountains, to the home of some Colombian friends. They treated us to a delicious meal.... and we had such a good time being surrounded by latin hospitality.

The view was amazing!

Amelia says: I am glad that I am making new friends like Juanita. We played tag up on this hill. 
Ethan says: I loved the food. My favorite part were the patacones, which are plantains fried and then you eat them like a tortilla, with meat and avocado on top. They were amazing. I also loved the soup we ate.